


Your number was up the moment i met you.

by whateverliesunsaid



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, in which edward's passing remark becomes a soulmate au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:35:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26826727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whateverliesunsaid/pseuds/whateverliesunsaid
Summary: Bella goes to Forks to die as her time to meet a soulmate was up. She doesn't.
Relationships: Edward Cullen/Bella Swan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Your number was up the moment i met you.

**Author's Note:**

> In Midnight Sun, Edward says "your time was up the day i met you." and i ran with it.

I clutched my cactus’ against my torso, eyebrows knit into a furrow as i dragged my fingertips around the textured clay. The scorching phoenix sun hit me through and through, as if it’s light could make it across my translucent body. A ghost, already. It would make me laugh, were it not so morbid that i was, quite literally, watching my number go down behind my eyes, everyday a little faster, a little closer to the teetering edge from where I’d inevitably fall.

My mom kissed my forehead, hands clutching my face so warmly it felt as if the sun had found a way to catch me from another angle, burning at my skin as its own personal goodbye. I forced a small smile to spread through my lips, my tone bordering on matter of factly when i said: “I’m going to be fine.”

“I know. I know.” She frowned, searching for her next words as the last one tumbled out from her lips. “Just— if you feel like you have to come home, you’ve got the keys, okay? You call me and I’ll come running.”

I didn’t let the fact that I already knew she had the color scheme of her crafts room picked out, ready to be splashed where I used to be. At that point in my life, I had already understood that my mom lived life in the moment. If I was going, she was going to life as if I had gone. She would follow after Phil, craft in her new crafts room, or do yoga, or whatever appeased her, because it was available to her at that moment. If I ever choose to return, things would be adapted to my newfound presence.

She was flexible in every way I wasn’t and in the end, it was me who had to adapt to her ways, for I always knew I was on my way somewhere. Deep where I wouldn’t dare venture into myself too long, lest it allowed me to dream: I always knew I wanted more, far more than something practical and mundane. I knew now that it wasn’t possible, but choosing to die on my own terms seemed fanciful enough. “I know.” I said and smiled, reassuring both her and myself that it would be okay.

“C’mon girls— We’re going to miss Bella’s flight!” Phil called from the car and I scraped the rocky entryway with my shoes, pushing down the knot in my throat.

Truth is, I knew I’d never come home; nor did I want to.

This was my goodbye, and finality danced through every word, waiting to materialize for good. Instead of saying another word, I settled for smiling instead.

* * *

I’m a bad liar, even I know that, but Charlie never made it complicated for small truths to be woven into answers for his questions. They were mostly simple, easy to work around: how are you, how’s your mom, how was your trip.

 _Fine, fine, fine_. It wasn’t a lie. Not only I had never been _a liar_ , I’ve also never been a good one, which is why attempting to always leers to the pitiful side of things rather than the bold and daring. Lying to Charlie may have proved easier to pull off than lying to my mom to whom I was an open book, but I never felt the need to. Charlie was many things, but he wasn’t overly curious. Lying to him would have felt unnecessarily cruel when so many things in our relationship had been overly harsh.

He never shot for the bullseye and I pretended not to notice the wandering bullets.

The outskirts of Forks started to rise around us, green, large and somehow entirely otherworldly. A spread of fog lining the path, sneaking into the woods where no man with a half a brain was willing to follow it. It was breath taking, really. The slopes covered in green, the trees braving the cold, cutting wind. Everything was natural, which is at its bare essentials ravenous. I remember little of my young summers at Forks, when I’d see no sun and would run until my lungs felt warm like a dragon’s up and down the reservation. In that corner where the sun doesn’t shine of the pacific northwest, I was the closest thing to hot blooded I could already feel my temperature coming down.

Inside the police car, in lieu of actual conversation, I turned on the local radio searching for music, another voice more willing to say than ours could ever be. Looking ahead into those upcoming however many days it would take for my return to the warmth, I expected to have many hours of devices speaking in our behalf. I lost myself in the view as the ancient radio struggled to pick up a connection and Charlie muttered under his breath about reception in the road until the static broke into an accent-less, misplaced voice the kind you can rely on whenever you turn on your television or radio:

“ _In local news, bears have returned to our area; so far, they have attacked_ —“ cut to Charlie pressing another button, skipping to static and then song in a fifties country station we didn’t have to agree for or against. I was grateful, really. Though I’m not superstitious, descending the mountain road into my new home under the weight obituaries felt entirely too on the nose for the small deaths I was already grieving. Instead, I settled for counting how many abandoned homes with their broken windows and hollow rooms or battered, ivy-covered cars we would drive past silently in the slithering road full of fog-covered bends.

In Forks, nature was a living force I couldn’t help but notice. Looking out into the impossibly tall woodland, I wondered whether it asked for reverence I could not give. As a compromise, I settled for fear. The woods and I would have to make do.

* * *

We arrived at the house and my heart tumbled down a flight of stairs inside my thorax, weighed by the overwhelming presence of the memories my parents had made there at the early days of their marriage— the only kind they ever had. Yellow cabinets, faded in the corner of the kitchen, my school pictures he wasn’t there to see taken, the wallpaper my mother had chosen when they bought this place off of a family going away. One of the few people who ever do.

Lucky for them, they never returned.

Either way, the house was paid and lived in; there was no going back now. It was a shrine to misplaced memories where Charlie would spend as little time as possible, which she knew because if she ever wanted to talk to him, It was the station she rang— and he always picked up.

My return was something of a novelty and I expected him to have told all the usual suspects all about it, which in Charlie’s language means a merely passing remark but everyone with a minimal understanding of who he is gets it: few words, deeper feelings.

I inherited that quality, really. That loneliness, too. The fact that he met his soulmate and then lost her weighed on him like a dark cloud, but I wouldn’t have half as much trouble by returning to the town where I already knew everyone and was in no chance of meeting my soulmate by chance. I was on my way out and okay with it. The wooden floor creaked under my bag’s pressure and I felt as though the floor underneath me caved entirely, an anxiety as old as time meeting me right at the door.

The house expected my departure as much as I craved it; it was from Charlie we kept this secret and under this burden someone ought to squeak. Rather her than me, I supposed, pushing my luggage up another stair, determined not to burden my dad with it until he picked it away from me effortlessly.

I pouted, he smiled. Both of us pretended not to notice the other.

* * *

The Chevy rumbled something fierce around me as I tried my best to avoid any of the other, entirely too breakable automobiles of choice in the school’s parking lot. It felt almost pointless to show up at all, too much exertion for the girl with the dwindling count of days in the soft dip of her elbow, her veins pulsing merrily behind the clear skin as if they knew no better. The awareness of the weight of my pretense weighed more and more as I gathered my backpack, put my coat on, jumped off the Chevy and rushed into the building with my eyes fixed on the ground.

The less people I made contact with, the less loss I’d leave behind. The fact that the whispering was loud enough to break through to me was an issue I’d have to endure. I was ready for it, really, all I had to do was keep my eyes down and my steps fast and hope to whoever’s in charge that I didn’t fall in some spectacular, noteworthy way or lose myself enough to interrupt a class. If I just survived this one hurdle, it would be over before they could learn my name.

No noticeable loss. I made it as far as the stairs until a talkative presence startled me, Eric Yorkie, he said, with the school’s paper. She introduced herself pointlessly, as he already knew all about her, it seemed. Then there was a camera flash, a very nice girl, and this person and that person and throughout that day I knew would be my last, I felt the desire to run as fast as my legs would take me, run until my lungs couldn’t take it, lose myself in the forest so they wouldn’t know what really happened.

Wouldn’t that be a nicety of my own?

Still, it could wait until lunchtime. If I were to be brave, I could wait until lunch to do it. Not arouse suspicions. It was a precarious plan but it was a plan nonetheless, the more I fantasized about it whilst listening to my peers, the more concrete it became. The easier it would be. The hours trickled down behind my eyes, the last I would ever have and by the second, I felt stronger in my resolve to live them on my own terms. When the numbers came down to zero, I would be happy to have done it my own way.

* * *

> **INSIDE. DAY. CAFETERIA.**
> 
> They swing open as four of the most astounding people Bella's ever seen enter (IN SLOW MOTION): THE CULLENS.
> 
> Two guys, two girls, all chalky pale, purplish shadows under their eyes... and all devastatingly beautiful. They move through the room with effortless grace, and take a seat at a table furthest from Bella's. Bella leans over to Jessica and Angela.
> 
> **BELLA**
> 
> Who are they?
> 
> **ANGELA**
> 
> The Cullens.
> 
> EDWARD, 17, WALKS IN. Lanky, with untidy, bronze colored hair. He seems inwardly turned, mysterious. More boyish than the others. But the most striking of all. Bella can't take her eyes off him.
> 
> **BELLA**
> 
> Who's he?
> 
> **JESSICA**
> 
> That's Edward Cullen.
> 
> Suddenly, Edward looks over, as if he heard Jessica from across the room. His eyes meet Bella's. But he seems... confused. Bella quickly looks away.

* * *

I was swept in the motions to the point where I didn’t even notice the freezing of the clock. In that moment, caught in the shame of being seen starring and tearing my gaze off of him, I felt my red cheeks spread warmth all the way down to my chest, my stubborn heart hammering through the conversation. Drowning out all the sounds.

* * *

It doesn’t strike me that I should have fallen dead until biology rolls in and he looks at me, the Cullen boy, with his deeply black eyes as though he ought to kill me himself, to finish my ungrateful deed — and he doesn’t. My heart raced the whole hour through, ashamed, anxious and waiting. Watched by the strength with which he doesn’t watch me. He doesn’t suffer the indignity it would be to look at me twice and I steel myself into not caring that I wouldn’t ever burdening him with my nuisance of a presence. It was unbearable, but it was _living_.

* * *

I didn’t understand what had happened until much, much too late.


End file.
